Last week I shared lessons I learned on sharing my faith from the the best in the game. Read post HERE. This week, I'll be sharing lessons I've learned from my personal experiences.
As a Christian and believer, one thing I can be sure of is that you've gotten the desire to reach people for him - you might have suppressed it for so long, but you've felt it- yes? You don't need to suppress it any more, If you truly say you love something/someone, you'll tell the world! Let your love for Jesus overflow so much in your heart such that you can't wait to tell someone about it every minute! Don't be comfortable knowing that people around you might be going to hell and do nothing about it.
You need to know your message people are tired of the wrong information, so don't be that preacher that tells people the wages of sin is death and leave out the fact that the gift of God is eternal life. Romans 6:23. So a few days back, I was walking on my street in the evening and I saw two guys smoking. It was not my normal route but the Holy spirit said to go in their direction this was new for e so I walked past them the first time. I eventually got around to talking to them and with the way I started, the couldn't have guessed where I was headed. I didn't start by rebuking them for smoking neither did I start with the all too popular "repent or you'll go to hell" speech, I started by speaking to them about normal things, family, work, life etc and this is how I usually start before I get around to telling them how much God loves them.
In 1 Cor 15:31 Paul was writing to the corinthian church after he heard how badly behaved they've been, but he didn't tell them "repent or you'll die" from a place of love he said "What?! Don't you know that the Holy Spirit lives in you?"
Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never!
Instead of condemning, he helped them see the importance of who they were in Christ and this should be the core of your evangelism, you can never go wrong with preaching love
Intentions are not enough, you actually need to go for most things you want to do in life, you'll often get the "Be more intentional" speech. But with sharing your faith, intentionality is not really enough. In my experience, its very easy for fear to cloud your intentions; so the minute you find someone and start talking
Just Start talking one major issue for me when I started was trying to figure out how to start the conversation, what to say etc. I can't really remember the first day I talked about Christ to someone but I think it was an Uber driver-I've evangelise
to quite a number of Uber drivers since then- there I was in the back seat, contemplating on if I should talk or not but the moment I started talking, every other thing flowed! I taught the Kids in church to start with "I have a gift for you" then go ahead to tell them the gift is the Grace of God. Take a cue from Jesus and the Samaritan woman. He started with small talk then got down to his main goal. John 4
Ask normal everyday questions like how's you job going, how's your family, what are your life goals etc just create small talk first then you can go ahead with the "I have a gift for you line." This works everytime! People like free things.
You can also start by
writing a tract study well and write out a tract describing the grace of God and how much he loves people! See one I created for
BloomTribe outreaches here
read content
HERE
Go with friends I like to take on projects solo it helps me tackle the fear of failure head on so I started out sharing my faith by myself but now that I know I can go out myself, I'm even more excited to go with friends! You can start by going with friends; it makes the process a whole lot easier. The apostles went out together. This year, I hope to preach christ in buses more and I'm starting by going with a friend on a bus preaching date next week! Holla if you want to join our bus preaching date!
Be consistent as with everything else Don't take breaks, Don't stop evangelising till you see God face to face.
Die daily to your fears and cares and allow Christ to live through you! ( 1 Cor 15:31)
Your lifestyle cannot teach the gospel It's okay to say you'll live an exemplary life, behave right, run your business with Godly principles etc. but also know that Jesus did not say, "Go into all the world and behave well" he said " Go into all the world and teach. Evangelism is showing people Christ not yourself or your actions because you're still human and you're not perfect.
Prayer and Study cannot be left out! Pray for confidence, study to get the right information. There are times when you won't have the answer to their questions and thankfully it's not an exam so collect their phone numbers and go back, study then get back to them on it. It's also an opportunity for you to learn something new.
Seek to grow so for the most part of last year, I spoke to only one person per time, I had the opportunity to evangelise to a crowd during the
Bloom Tribe Easter outreach and visit to a shelter but for my personal evangelism projects, I'm seeking to grow this year. I'm going out even more boldly to share Christ in buses and bring even more people to knowledge of him. So as with every other thing you do in life, seek to grow and get better with sharing your faith; this is the one thing you can't do in heaven that truly counts!
Lastly,
There are two kinds of people you'll meet when you go out
Christians: I've approached Christians that felt very offended that I was coming to evangelise to them; and my first thought was "aren't we all Christians, can't we at least have a decent conversation?"
the look on their face read "How can you evangelise to a whole Christian like me" When you meet people like this, encourage them and show them why sharing what they know and have is so important.
Other Religions: Don't start by condemning them, Mark Cahill in his book said "Don't tell them that if they die they'll go to hell, Tell them why they need him first and tell them how he loves them and how they should respond.
Next week, I'll be doing a full post on what to say when you go out evangelising alongside a review of the book I learned everything from!
"ONE THING YOU CAN'T DO IN HEAVEN" by Mark Cahill
Send me an email (kunmioni@gmail.com) if you'll like an e-copy!
Love and light!
photo by @createherstock
